ARE NO JOKE Fitch Is Being Driven Sane When it comes to partying, many players think Cleveland is the NBA's worst town. When it comes to basketball, Cleveland, for years, also had just about the worst team. But no more. The years the Cavaliers lost 67, 59, 53 and 50 gamesand felt fortunate it was only that many--are gone now. At 36-23, they're ahead of Washington and everyone else in the Cen-tral Division. Only Golden State and Boston have better records. The Cavaliers, who play the Lakers tonight at the Forum, are young and have no All-Stars. Just seven guys who seem that good. The only thing funny about the team now is the coach, Bill Fitch, a laugh-at-himself (not to mention everybody else) Irishman who put on a referee's jacket after a game this season and later pleaded "temporary insanity." But there's nothing crazy about Fitch; only the things he says. And who'd blame him? After he won the job (which may not be the right way to put it) with the expansion team back in 1970, Cleveland finished last in its division four times in five years, during which time only Portland was a bigger loser. And not by much. It all began to change last season for a team which, to that point, had but one flirtation with fame: a 50- point game by that incomparable center, Walt Wesley. The Cavaliers were 40-42 and lost a trip to the playoffs (and out of Cleveland) the last day of the season last April when they lost a one-point game. As Fitch is only too eager to tell you, close only counts "in horseshoes, hand grenades and at the drive-in movies." So this season he set out not only to get no technical fouls, an impossibility in that he's Irish and a Taurus, but to get to the playoffs, an even greater impossibility in the days when things were so bad, one of his players ("one of my better ones, I'm afraid") once inbounded the ball by dribbling it in himself. BY TED GREEN Times Staff Writer Well, somehow, Fitch pulled it off. Not the technical fouls part, of course. The playoffs, apparently. To the delight of some 20,000-plus crowds at the new Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, the Cavaliers have won as many close games as Fitch has oneliners, so many, in fact, that Fitch says he's worn out all his pants praying from his knees. And now they can get to heaven if they stay warm, and there's no reason to think they won't because they're hot now. They've won nine of their last 10. Fitch spent Friday night dutifully watching a Laker game. Before it began, he must have greeted 20 or 50 well-wishers, almost all of whom wanted to know what the hell happened to the Cavaliers they once knew, loved and laughed at. Green eyes twinkling to match his outfit, Fitch told them over and over that he's just happy for his boys because they've worked hard. "As long as we make the playoffs," he said, "I don't care if they give us rubber checks." And then he went one-on-one with a writer and was kind enough to remember the way it was. "Those were funny days," he said, "but they weren't nice days. I'd never gone through anything like it before. Now that we've won a few, I couldn't go back to all that losing again. If someone told me I'd lose 67 games sometime down the road, I'd cut my throat. And if I didn't have the nerve, I'm sure some fan would do it for me. "I'll say one thing, though. I've never been treated as a joke. Hell, the writers knew they couldn't have done any better themselves. Of course, they could have tried simply by applying for the job. Someone probably could have gotten it. "Why, back in the bad old days (Laker owner) Jack Kent Cooke wanted us to play as the second game of a doubleheader. Saves expenses. When L.A. got through with the first team, they could take us. Cooke once even sent a chauffeured Rolls-Royce to pick me up at the hotel. He couldn't wait to see us." Being a Ph.D in self-effacement, Fitch is almost illiterate when the subject is bragging, so he won't count his playoff money until all 82 games are hatched. "I'd love the standings," he said, "if only we could quit today. You know, when you've learned to wear a belt and suspenders for five years, it's pretty hard to go mod all of a sudden." Yet the fact remains that the Cavaliers are playing a mod kind of ball (they run on offense, actually sweat on defense and substitute liberally) with a nucleus of seven (Jim Chones, Jim Brewer, Bobby Smith, Jim Cleamons, Dick Snyder, Campy Russell and Austin Carr) whose average age is a mod 26. Throw in an old hand like Nate Thurmond, 34, to back up ABA frogturned-prince Chones at center, add one part camaraderie ("they're nice kids who like each other," Fitch said), two parts selflessness (no one's averaging 20 points a game and Fitch says he has run out of game balls because so many guys have gotten them) and, pooof, the Cleveland Cavaliers : are out of the pot and on fire. "The guys are doin' it," Fitch said. "I'm just along for the ride." On a road with no more bumps. Fitch's main problem is all the Jims. "I call Chones 'Sweets,' Brewer 'Brew' and Cleamons 'Clem,'" Fitch said, "but when I say dammit, Jim, they know which one I mean." Bill Fitch